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Virtual Yearbooks: 1940s

This information is arranged by year and includes MSM historical and other highlights of New York City’s music history.

1940

The Concert and Placement Bureau (placement office) opens in May “to secure engagements for our gifted students so that they may have the encouragement and discipline of frequent appearances.”

The School has 525 students and a faculty of 58.

Appearing in recital at the School are Harold Bauer (pictured at the piano); Rudolf Serkin; the two-piano duo of Rudolph Gruen (pictured, middle) and Frances Hall; and one of the School’s first graduates, Dora Zaslavsky (pictured standing).

Alumnus Leander Dell’Anno joins the faculty, where he teaches piano and theory until 1975. In 1960 he became coordinator of the piano minor department and also acted as student advisor in the 1970s.

Other Highlights of New York City Musical History:

Bela Bartók moves to New York from Hungary.

Virgil Thomson becomes a music critic for the New York Herald-Tribune.

Higher and Higher, music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart, opens with Jack Haley and Marta Eggerth at the Shubert Theater (84 performances).

Cover and title page from a December 5th performance of Mozart’s Don Giovanni by the Metropolitan Opera, which benefited the School. Conducted by Bruno Walter, the cast includes Ezio Pinza (Giovanni), Rose Bampton (Donna Anna), and Bidu Sayao (Zerlina).

Other Highlights of New York City Musical History:

Lady in the Dark, music by Kurt Weill, lyrics by Ira Gershwin, opens with Gertrude Lawrence and New York-born Danny Kaye at the Alvin Theater (162 performances).

Billy Strayhorn composes “Take the A Train.”

1942

The School awards its first postgraduate diploma.

Conductor Leopold Stokowski attends a Manhattan School of Music orchestral concert. A communiqué from Janet Schenck to the members of the School’s orchestra following a concert mentions “all the very complimentary things Mr. Stokowski had to say … how delighted Mr. Stokowski was and that he could not say enough about the performance, the phrasing, and Mr. Kortschak’s leadership. He was also much interested in Miss [faculty member and alumna Ludmila] Ulehla’s composition.”

Monthly concerts for children are inaugurated at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Steinway & Sons retools its factory to begin producing gliders for the U.S. Air Force, some of which are used on D-Day.

1943

Friedrich Schorr (seated at piano), having just retired from twenty years at the Metropolitan Opera and with a great European tradition behind him, takes over the vocal department and Opera Workshop.

Amendment to the charter authorizes the School to grant the bachelor of music degree.

Other Highlights of New York City Musical History:

Bela Bartók composes Concerto for Orchestra, a commission from the Serge Koussevitsky Foundation.

Isaac Stern, 22, makes Carnegie Hall debut.

Duke Ellington, 44, makes Carnegie Hall debut.

New York City Opera founded, debuts with Puccini’s Tosca at City Center.

Oklahoma by Rodgers and Hammerstein, choreography by Agnes de Mille, starring Alfred Drake, Celeste Holm, and Howard da Silva, opens at the St. James Theater (2,212 performances).

First authentic Afro-Cuban jazz tune, Tanga, by Mario Bauzá, is recorded by Machito and the Afro-Cubans.

Leonard Bernstein, 25, makes conducting debut with the New York Philharmonic, substituting for Bruno Walter, at Carnegie Hall.

1944

Mr. Bertram Borden, a Trustee of MSM, gives a large endowed gift to the School in memory of his wife, who had also been a Trustee. Given through the Mary Owen Borden Memorial Foundation, it was the largest single gift the School had received up to that time.

December 1 — Pianist Harold Bauer plays Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto with the Senior Orchestra under the direction of Hugo Kortschak.

Other Highlights of New York City Musical History:

Ned Rorem (former MSM faculty) begins studies with Virgil Thompson.

Miles Davis moves to NYC.

New York jazz singer William Clarence “Billy” Eckstine forms big band playing new “bebop” jazz.

1945

June 1 — Janet D. Schenck, the School’s director and founder, confers the degree of Bachelor of Music at Manhattan School of Music for the first time. She is assisted by Dr. Harold Bauer (pictured above, teaching at MSM).

Special classes are arranged to help the returning veterans. The School is one of two music schools in New York City, outside the universities, qualified by the government to accept returning veterans both under Public Law 346 (G.I. Bill of Rights) and Public Law 16 (Veterans Vocational Rehabilitation Law).

Janet Schenck meets several times with NYC Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. “His interest in the school had been significant,” writes Mrs. Schenck.

Other Highlights of New York City Musical History:

Up in Central Park, music by Sigmund Romberg, lyrics by Dorothy Fields, opens at the Century Theater (504 performances).

New York Philharmonic joins in mourning President Roosevelt’s death by cancelling its concert, April 13.

Carousel by Rodgers and Hammerstein opens at the Majestic Theater (890 performances).

1946

John Lewis

John Lewis begins work toward a Bachelor of Music degree, studying theory, and will go on to earn a Master of Music degree in 1953. This same year, he joins Dizzy Gillespie’s big band and premieres his “Toccata for Trumpet” at Carnegie Hall in 1947. Lewis later works with Miles Davis’s nonet and founds the Modern Jazz Quartet.